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Comment by jrwoodruff | Hacker News Reader

The NYT just kinda blew my mind. A newspaper article just blew my mind. This is, by far, the best multimedia storytelling I think I've ever seen. Kudos to the team involved in putting this together, you've shown me the future of media and the internet.

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I was reading some of the other comments here and wondering if anyone else thought the multimedia content upstaged the writing. This is the better than any kind of storytelling I've ever seen. Videos that auto play as you get to them. 3-D maps that rotate, zoom and plot a course as you scroll down. Path markers that draw on the map as the writer describes the scene. Hopefully more authors and artists will embrace this level of detail and integration of multimedia content with their stories.

My first thoughts were also on the same line as yours, but I guess that any disruptions (or mini ones such the way this story was delivered), we start off by being floored by the technology. Once the technology becomes ubiquitous, the content comes to forefront and becomes key.

I hope this trend of story telling with rich media content continues. Total immersion could be just around the corner.

Is anyone from the NYT here and can you give any insight into how long this project took to complete? Is this a beautiful one off, or is the goal that this format eventually becomes the new norm?

It says right at the bottom, copied for your convenience:

Graphics and design by Hannah Fairfield, Xaquín G.V., Jon Huang, Wayne Kamidoi, Sam Manchester, Alan McLean, Jacky Myint, Graham Roberts, Joe Ward, Jeremy White and Josh Williams. Photography by Ruth Fremson. Video by Catherine Spangler.

Additional video by Eric Miller and Shane Wilder.

Kristen Millares Young contributed research. The reporting for this article on the Feb. 19 avalanche at Tunnel Creek was done over six months. It involved interviews with every survivor, the families of the deceased, first responders at Tunnel Creek, officials at Stevens Pass and snow-science experts. It also included the examination of reports by the police, the medical examiner and the Stevens Pass Ski Patrol, as well as 40 calls to 911 made in the aftermath of the avalanche. The Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research provided a computer-generated simulation of the avalanche, based on data accumulated from the Stevens Pass accident report and witness accounts. Additional sources are: LIDAR data from King County GIS Center; Iowa Environmental Mesonet, Iowa State University; Mark Moore, U.S. Forest Service; National Avalanche Center.

How much all this quality reporting and presentation cost? I have a feeling that in-depth journalism doesn't pay for itself.

This interview with Steve and Andrew should give you more details into the process, and links to similar projects done in the past: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/12/new-york-t...

I'm not surprised since Jeremy Ashkenas works there. They've got probably some of the best front-end web developers and they're extremely smart for realizing that those kind of people are what it takes to keep them relevant today.

Credit where credit's due -- this project has nothing to do with me. A small army of talented folks from Sports, the Graphics department, Photo and Video put it together over the course of several months: http://cl.ly/LibF

More details on how it was made here: http://www.poynter.org/latest-news/top-stories/198970/how-th...

As a former newsroom graphic artist, I'm really curious - I assume you work on the web team rather than the news side? What is the separation between the news teams and the web development team? Does the graphics team build special features like this? Are they also responsible for designing or building article templates? It's fun watching the new order take shape, and pieces like this make me long for the newsroom again...

You should get back into it then. I know the Times is always looking for good folks.

I'm in Interactive News, on the news side (for a few more days, at least ;) Special features like this one are usually done by Multimedia (recently merged with the Graphics team), and there are also many detailed individual graphics, photos, and videos that are a part of it.

Things like article templates are more in the Design department -- but they also collaborated on this. Really, everyone pitches in as best they can.

There isn't one, all-encompassing web team. The Interactive News department (as Jeremy has described) is in the newsroom, while teams like the one I am a member of (which make more structural stuff, for want of a better word) are a few floors away from the newsroom.

It's kind of a reflection of how deeply the web is (and will continue to be) integrated into organisations like NYT.

Frankly, I'd like to have a detailed online course to teach me how to create something like this including annotated code, exercises, the works. If I ever learn enough to do it myself, I'm going to teach my kids. A spectacular demonstration of the creative possibilities of this new medium! Thanks for creating it.

If you do see anyone there who you know worked on this, let them know they did a phenomenal job.

I literally gasped when it got to the animated map display. Truly brilliant.

Excellent story telling, beautiful pictures, animations and with minimal clicks.

the NYTimes is a failing operation desperately grabbing at any approach that may bring in readers. this story, with its complexity of mixed media, disrupted the story and made it hard to follow. fortunately, i use tools that strip the text and allow me to read it as one continuous whole. let the story tell the story. quit trying to be hip or 'trending'.

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